The Jewel

by Neil Hegarty

  Tim got up, struck a match, lit the candles in the pair of round glass tealight holders on the table. The glass was thick, and yellow: the candlelight shone gold, on the glassy tabletop.

  She ate a little tabbouleh herself, the scent of mint, the taste of sweet onion, and parsley.

  The air thick, with – with something, could she allow herself to sniff and taste this too, and decipher? With grief, and unspoken words. Not difficult to decipher, not at all. Tim said, ‘Roisin, what sort of paintings do you like?’

  Alive. Paintings that were alive. That teemed with life. She gave a short, dry bark of a laugh. ‘Unfashionable paintings, really. The really, really unfashionable ones.’

  It was all too easy to lecture, she felt – to lecture, in this case, two men with manners, two kind men, two men able and willing to listen. But this was not a gallery, nor a lecture theatre: and gentle Tim, gentleman Tim had asked earnestly, as though he truly wanted to know, as though he wanted to understand something, to put his finger on a point that was troubling him.

  And she realised that she wanted to tell them too.

  She looked at him: she saw what she already of course understood, that he knew about Maeve, that he and Michael were piecing her life together around this fact, this silence, and were coming to reasonable conclusions, and to the truth.

  ‘Light,’ she said, ‘and colour, and life. Is what I like: any or all of these three.’

  Tim nodded, didn’t speak, didn’t jump in, waited for her to continue.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a period, or a style, or a name: a piece just has to capture something, something that appeals to my heart. And I only know it when I’ve seen it. I like the Victorians, the unfashionable stuff,’ she acknowledged, ‘not the pre-Raphaelites, obviously,’ she said, and now both Tim and Michael laughed. ‘Some of the other painting from the period: the painting that’s alive, not the dead stuff.’ She told them about the few pieces she had acquired over the years, filled with crowds: carriages stuffed with people, and beaches with donkeys and bathing machines and children, and railway stations filled with masses of people. People.

  Michael made as if to speak, but she charged on.

  ‘Do you know Emily Sandborne?’ she asked them.

  They shook their heads in unison: and then – ‘Wait, yes, I do, I mean,’ said Michael, ‘I’ve heard of her. The National Gallery in Dublin has one of her pieces, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Tim. ‘I don’t know a thing about her. Tell me about Emily Sandborne.’

  Roisin took a breath, and told them.

  Emily Sandborne was for years considered a classic downtrodden Victorian lady artist. Mrs Sandborne. Her work was ignored, or at best belittled; her talent was mocked and scorned; her paintings were given few airings; and in the years after her death, she was almost completely forgotten.

  ‘For years and years.’ Even though her paintings were, she said, ‘magically good. And then, the colour: she had some ways with colour that nobody has ever been able to reproduce.’

  And on top of that, she told them, she died, in 1839, of syphilis, passed on to her by her prostitute-frequenting husband.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Tim said, ‘like Mrs Beeton.’

  Just like Mrs Beeton. ‘So, she died, of syphilis, and that was an end to that.’

  But eventually her remains were disinterred.

  ‘The story went around that a painting had been buried with her, and her descendants petitioned for her grave to be opened. I suppose they sniffed money. This was back around the time of the First World War. So she was dug up, eventually, and this painting was discovered with her. On cloth, on linen, mid-century. It had been buried with her.’

  Michael nodded. ‘Oh yes, I remember now. Like a shroud.’

  ‘Well, that’s the idea that went around. But – no: not a shroud. It was a piece she created, that she wanted buried with her. But not a shroud: she wanted to take it with her when she went: but not to wrap herself up in. It wasn’t morbid, that way. The point is,’ she said, ‘it was a distemper piece. Completely unblemished, as though it was some relic, some miraculous thing. Distemper pieces fade and fade with time; they don’t last, they almost never survive the passage of time. But she did something to this piece, so that her colours shine – like stained glass, really. It’s the most beautiful piece I’ve ever seen,’ she said and paused.

  Tim said, ‘What did she do to the colours, to make them last?’

  ‘Nobody knows.’

  It was snapped up, she said, spotted by a curator at the National Gallery in Dublin. It became a small curiosity, to be shown once a year, for a month, as a sort of sweet ritual. Something to be petted, said Roisin, and wrinkled her nose. ‘She still wasn’t getting her due.’

  And then, twenty or so years ago, the fashions swung and changed again: one or two of Sandborne’s pieces were reconsidered, one or two more were put up for sale by private collectors, and fetched swollen sums; suddenly, a couple of municipal English galleries had to reassess and reinsure the Sandbornes in their dusty collections. Trendy Sandborne, suddenly.

  A few historians took an interest. One such turned up a letter in the British Library: a note, a single sheet of paper, written by Sandborne and detailing her plans for her last piece. Written just before she died. Suddenly the piece hanging quietly in Dublin had a name – The Jewel – and a story. The gallery seemed to realise all over again what it had in its possession: its gorgeousness, its utter uniqueness. And today, The Jewel was to all intents and purposes – priceless.

  Tim and Michael nodded together. Tim said, ‘Why do you think she took The Jewel to the grave with her? I mean, why did she go to so much trouble?’

  Roisin paused. The garden was dark now, and the candles burned all the more clearly in their yellow glass holders.

  ‘She was taking back what she owned, before she died.’ Roisin paused again and said, ‘Asserting herself. She was telling the world, I love this, you can’t have it, it’s too late, it’s mine, and I’m taking it with me. Of course, they did take it back in the end: so lots of people think she has been betrayed, her grave robbed, her wishes ignored. And others think that she had her way, that she took back some power while she still could. Plus she was only thirty-something when she died, and her horrible husband as good as killed her, and her work is so fabulous, and she took her mysteries to the grave with her – and, well,’ said Roisin, ‘you can see why she’s having a bit of a moment.’

  Tim and Michael nodded, and Tim leaned forward a little and asked, ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think it was a question of love,’ Roisin said, and her voice vibrated a little as she spoke. ‘She was dying, after years of seeing her work ignored; and I think that she wanted her best work close to her heart. She had lost faith in her world,’ she said, ‘and quite right too. How could she feel anything else? Her work and her talents were all she had. And The Jewel encapsulated this. And so, taking it with her was the only thing she could do.’

  They nodded. That made sense. Michael said, ‘So, she was renewing her love for her work, and her faith in – herself, I suppose, in the future.’

  Herself, the future. ‘Yes,’ Roisin said, ‘exactly.’

  *

  Roisin felt a faint fluttering of happiness, as she farewelled the men, in their gold candlelight, and took the tube home later that evening. Faint, tentative, but it was there; and it had only a little to do with the good food, the greens, the parsley and mint, and the lemon cake Tim had presented unexpectedly as a final flourish. The train was half empty and the carriage, hot and airless though it was, was tolerable; and she felt a glimmering of happiness. ‘I hope you’ll come again soon,’ Tim said and kissed her on one cheek, on the other cheek, warmth leavened by English formality. ‘It was lovely to meet you.’ Michael walked her through the muggy night to the soot-smelling station, where he enveloped her in a hug: she preferred the two kisses herself, it was the least difficult w
ay to be touched, but she knew he meant well. A little while later, as she changed at Embankment station for the train to Clapham, a drunk vomited almost on her shoes, right there on the Northern Line platform. But even this could not strip away these tentative feelings of happiness, which she carried with her as she rattled south.

  *

  As for Michael, as he walked the short distance from the station back to the house, he remembered the tone of Roisin’s voice, the note of passion, of engagement, that seemed to hold her as she spoke.

  ‘OK?’ Tim called from the kitchen. ‘She got away?’

  Michael went into the kitchen, pulled out a chair, sat, poured another half-glass of wine. ‘She’s only half alive, isn’t she? These paintings, this half-life, she’s boxed in.’

  Tim paused, clicked a button on the dishwasher, pushed the door closed, turned back. ‘Seems so.’

  ‘Like a shadow world.’ Michael looked at his glass of warming pink wine, looked at the darkening garden, looked at the yellow candles.

  Tim shook his head, shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Top me up a little bit too, will you?’ He watched as Michael poured out the last of the wine. ‘A shadow world: that’s exactly it.’

  ‘It’s not up to me to race around feeling sorry for people,’ Michael said and frowned. ‘But I do feel sorry for her.’

  ‘She came alive when she talked about her paintings,’ Tim mused, ‘I suppose. But I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem enough.’ He ran a finger around the rim of his glass, hesitated for a moment. Then he said, ‘You said they found a wire, didn’t you?’

  Michael nodded. ‘So the gossip was, around the town. That Maeve tried to deal with it herself: that’s what girls had to do, back then; there was damn-all help available. And it went wrong, and she died of blood loss, there in the grotto. And Roisin was the one to find her.’

  ‘And she never got over it.’

  Another nod. ‘And she never got over it.’

  They sat in silence, in the yellow candlelight.

  29

  The Sculpture Court was practically complete now. Roisin clipped along through the galleries, the porphyry and gentian and cerulean and lapis: she swung open the heavy green-copper doors which formed its dramatic entrance, but which seemed too heavy, almost, to move – they would have to do something about that – and took a step or two into the great hall. It rang with noise: a drill was screeching against the polished floor; and a gaggle of workmen, in high-visibility jackets and wearing masks and goggles and outsize pads over their ears – they looked like aliens – were standing around another man, similarly clad and accessorised, crouching on the ground.

  How many men does it take to create a Sculpture Court? – lots and lots of men. Plus electric cables, and dust, and a racket.

  And yet, the hall was almost complete. She could see its final shape ghostly amid the din: white light welling from hidden ceiling windows, scale and height, grandeur and beautiful space. Statues would presently be dotted through this expanse. And The Jewel would be raised into its final position, just – there, the star of the show; and her eye was lifted, and caught and held by the sight of the space high on the wall. Read had pointed it out to them all, a few weeks ago, at a democratic staff meeting, at the ‘big reveal’, as the email had wincingly put it. They had gathered in the unfinished hall, even more dusty and displeasing on that day, and the reveal had been revealed, and they had looked, and listened to Read’s voice echoing through the dusty air, and had – seeming, Roisin observed, for the most part underwhelmed – returned to their desks.

  Roisin had hung on that day, for a few minutes: after the others had dispersed, and even Dr Read had slipped away – seeming dispirited; that vertical frown mark between her eyes looked, Roisin thought, even more like the line of an axe blow – she had stayed behind to take in the scene in the soon-to-be Sculpture Court. The walls were still bare: soon, she knew, they would be silk-hung in the colour she herself had selected: green, a dim phosphorus green, a shade and depth she wondered about, though it was too late now. The painting would be raised, and hung, and the courtyard and the entire building would be left open to the punters, and that would be that.

  Someone else had stayed behind: a young man, hardly more than a boy, though tall for his age, and too thin. A bounce of curly red hair. He was, Roisin recalled dimly, a new person in the something department; and lumped with the task of leading guided tours around the place. Roisin had nodded at him that day, and looked at the hair and away, and left the young man to it.

  Dark skin under his eyes: too dark for such a young thing. Roisin remembered this too.

  His thinness and his red hair had reminded her of Maeve: and she had walked away, a little faster.

  Now, today, the boy was here again. He was standing behind one of the heavy doors, against the dusty wall, as though he hadn’t moved in the intervening two weeks. The air in the hall, though still full of noise, was now less full of dust; the light from the hidden windows was clearer, whiter, more radiant. Roisin’s eye, accustomed as it was to surfaces, scanned his surface too: the dust in the air seemed to have settled on this boy’s skin, for it looked clouded.

  Again, Roisin was reminded of Maeve.

  A bright voice, like a gleam of coloured light, glancing across her memory: ‘I wish you’d let me help you.’

  She turned to the boy, quickly, before she changed her mind, raising her voice above the screeching drill.

  ‘So, what do you think of this room?’

  The drill, the terrible screeching, it actually helped. Difficult to be – tense, inhibited, chilly, all the things she otherwise inevitably would be, now that she had to raise her voice, to almost bawl at this dusty-faced boy.

  ‘I think,’ the boy replied loudly, ‘I think it’ll be great when it’s finished. When the place is cleaned up and completed.’ He coughed, and then added, ‘And when they unplug the drill.’

  The slenderest of exchanges, but the boy’s reply enabled Roisin to smile a little, and then the boy smiled too.

  The young man. He was a young man.

  ‘Actually, I can’t wait for them to finish,’ he said. ‘I don’t care so much about the sculptures, but I can’t wait to see the Sandborne hung there on the wall. I’ve only started here in the gallery, and I haven’t ever seen this painting, I mean, in the flesh.’

  Roisin hadn’t either, and said so.

  ‘Really?’ the young man said – loudly, and then stopped and blushed at the sound of his echoing voice, for the workmen had chosen this moment to pause their drilling. ‘Sorry,’ he added, and smiled, and Roisin smiled too.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been here a few years myself: and the paintings have been in storage all that time. Including this painting – or especially this painting. So, no opportunity. And besides,’ Roisin said, ‘it’ll be worth waiting for.’

  Like Maeve, just a little. More that there was just a touch of something that seemed to encourage a warmth, a note of colour. That was all.

  She added, ‘Though I can’t wait either, to be honest,’ and laughed again.

  So trite – I can’t wait – and yet a connection made, there and then. They talked about the painting for a few moments. A chink in the armour.

  Then they walked back through the cerulean, the porphyry rooms together. The young man’s name was Gerard, he revealed, a touch belatedly, as they clacked along together. He extended a hand: ‘How do you do.’ Gerard: a thoroughly plain name. Roisin shook Gerard’s hand, and smiled kindly into his dark-shadowed eyes, and introduced herself. ‘Roisin.’ And Gerard said that, oh yes, he knew who Roisin was; she was the Keeper of Displays; it was nice of her to take the time to say hello; he blushed again. Then Roisin descended the new staircase, long and white and gleaming, into the lobby; and Gerard went upstairs, and that was that.

  Later – after a silent walk home through Dublin streets that hissed with rain and traffic, after eggs scrambled and bread toasted and The Arche
rs – Roisin sat in her painted house, and thought about Maeve. A chink: that was it. There was nothing much about Gerard, hardly a single thing if you discounted his hair, his frame, to connect him with Maeve.

  It was the painting.

  The colours, Gerard had said hesitantly – and then continued, seeming to gather a head of steam, build a little speed. The colours in the windows: the supernatural gleam of green and blue and red and yellow, the radiance, the lustre, the unfaded beauty. The gleam of the pauldron in the darkness, he said, and the welling green of the stone set into the pauldron: the black armour worn by the guard, and shining black amid the shadows; the glossy, shadowed horse; and the dark heel that hung down amid the fitful light of the lamps carried by the other guards; the eyes caught in this same light and glinting too, and this glint catching not their exultation at the scene, but their grief, and their shame, and their fear. Such tired faces, the black shadows pooling in the hollows of their ageing, paunching skin. Emily Sandborne herself, with her long, dark hair, alert, grieving, an observer in the shadows. All these human faces – said Gerard, and now Roisin caught a wink of a tear in his eyes as he spoke. ‘Sorry,’ said Gerard. ‘I fill up every time I see this painting, in a book or a catalogue. It’s his heel.’ The leathered, rough, tough old heel, the dusty and travel-worn heel that hangs from the saddle, that says everything, that cries out for the pity and compassion that this man will never receive. ‘Look at me. What will I be like when I see the actual piece?’ Gerard stopped, and Roisin nodded.

  ‘I know.’

  The scrambled eggs cooled on the plate, as Roisin thought about the painting, the colours and the shadows, Sandborne watching. Maeve. Herself. The walls of the room were lit dimly: their textured surfaces were alive with a thousand gradations of light and darkness, a landscape of tiny, infinitesimal shadows and lights. She knew. She had trained herself out of looking back, of glancing over her shoulder – but no training would ever in the end suffice. The painting was alive. She exhaled.